I doubt it's possible to fine-tune a JPEG to come close to a RAW file. There are so little options in comparison and any judgement call we make, we do so on a 10$ LCD screen that is calibrated not to be as accurate as possible but to show the shot as clear as possible. It could be a nice challenge but I'd fear JPEG would stand no chance. Try fine-tuning it so that it overexposed only a portion of the shot or when doing architecture decreases the temperature of the granite while increasing the limestone.
It's like trying to fine-tune a Fiat Uno in order to compete with the rest in Formula 1.
And this, I think, gets to the heart of the issue...
No one is saying you can't get good shots shooting JPG. If shooting conditions are ideal, or close to it, JPG can really hold it's own and be a time saver because it won't require much processing. Sure you can tweak a JPG; exposure, color balance and so forth can all be adjusted, no problem.
The really big difference, the one thing that really matters, I think, is
Latitude.
As [MENTION=31330]J-see[/MENTION] points out, you can't tune a Fiat to compete in Formula 1 but *why* not? Because the Fiat simply doesn't have what it takes to begin with and you can't tweak what you don't have. What I get when I shoot RAW is a degree of latitude a JPG simply can't touch. For one thing, it's an 8-bit file. All JPG's are 8-bit and there's no getting around that. For those who don't already know, each color channel (Red, Green and Blue) in a JPG can use 256 shades for each of those channels; a a total of 16 million tonal values or colors (256 shades of Red x 256 shades of Green x 256 shades of Blue =16.2 million total color combinations). A twelve-bit RAW file, on the other hand, has 4,096 shades of color per channel for total of over 68 billion colors (and that "b" is not a typo). JPG is already starting to look a little woozy but we're not done because our Nikon cameras can produce
14-bit RAW files and while those extra bits of color may not sound like much lets do the math anyway...
I had to do the math manually (meaning with a calculator) because I can't find figures online for tonal values of 14-bit RAW files. It's an easy thing to calculate, though, and anyone who wants to can check my figures. Here's what I get after crunching the numbers: A 14-bit RAW file equates to 16,383 colors
per channel (even I'm a little surprised at this) for a total tonal range of 4.3 trillion color values. To kind of put these huge numbers into perspective, a 14-bit RAW file contains as many as 2.7
thousand times as many tonal values as JPG. Personally; I refuse to throw away that much
latitude, that much sheer tonal information about my shots. It's a BIG reason why I shoot with a DSLR.
So yeah, if you need to go to the corner grocery, both your Fiat and your Formula 1 race car will get you there and back. The difference is the F1 will do things your Fiat can't begin to imagine doing and nothing you or anyone else can do to it will allow it to keep pace with the F1.
....